Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl was born on February 3, 1887, in Salzburg. Qualifying as a pharmacist at the University of Vienna, Trakl struggled with lifelong depression, drug dependency, and an agonized bond with his sister Grete. In 1912, Ludwig von Ficker published Trakl's incandescent poems in the Innsbruck avant-garde journal Der Brenner.

When World War I erupted, Trakl served as a medical lieutenant at the bloody Battle of Grodek in Galicia. Tasked with treating nearly a hundred screaming, severely mutilated soldiers in a field tent without anesthetics, Trakl suffered a complete mental collapse. Transferred to a military psychiatric hospital in Kraków, he died of an overdose in November 1914 at age twenty-seven.